That little tease of Project Astra yesterday has brought us to a full announcement today for Google’s next platform, Android XR. The new platform is official as the extended reality space from Google and it is powered by Android, so we should see an easier adoption from developers and manufacturers. Samsung and Qualcomm are already onboard, with a prototype headset unveiled today and plans to sell it at some point in 2025.
What is Android XR? The XR stands for eXtended reality and is a mixture of virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality. In other words, it’s a technology or idea that tries to bring in all of those viewing experiences you might get from a headset, only the hope is to make it very easy to interact with and to bring with into the real world.
Google said today that when in headset form, you’ll be able to “effortlessly switch between being fully immersed in a virtual environment and staying present in the real world.” You can fill up those environments with apps or content or Gemini as the assistant helping you do things. YouTube, Google TV, and Google Maps with Immersive View were certainly ideal apps to be a part of Android XR, and they are. We should also be able to use Chrome with multiple virtual screens, Circle to Search, and other top apps and games from Google Play, because again, this is Android.
Samsung debuts Project Moohan headset. The first headset device is from Samsung and it is codenamed Project Moohan. You can see it at the top of this story. This device, according to Samsung, is “Equipped with state-of-the-art displays, Passthrough capabilities and natural multi-modal input” and “will be your spatial canvas to explore the world through Google Maps, enjoy a sports match on YouTube, or plan trips with the help of Gemini.” The headset is “lightweight, ergonomically optimized hardware designed to ensure maximum comfort during use.” Qualcomm added today that it features “state-of-the-art displays, support for hand, eye and voice input and was designed to be comfortable with balanced weight distribution.”
This Samsung headset is powered by Qualcomm’s upcoming Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2 platform that will debut in 2025. And the timing there makes sense, since Samsung isn’t planning to release this headset for purchase until next year.
Project Astra glasses in prototype still. As you saw yesterday, Google plans to let prototype glasses further this Android XR mission by bringing its technology into your daily life. While Samsung’s headset is more of an office or living room device, Google sees Android XR on your head all day, looking like a normalish pair of glasses.
With a pair of Android XR glasses on, you would lean heavily on Gemini to help you. You could talk to Gemini to be informed of conversations going on in your group chats, find directions to nearby shops you need to stop by on your way home, get real-time translations of objects and from people through your glasses lenses, and more. As you’ll see in videos posted by Google, they want Gemini to present informative cards to you that are seen on the lenses, in a much less-goofy way than we had with that old Google Glasses idea.
In fact, these look a lot like Meta and Ray-Ban’s smart glasses, only smarter. They also look a lot smaller than Meta’s new Orion Augmented Reality glasses that are truly as silly as it gets. We’ll see if Google can deliver anything close to what is pictured here.
And that’s the news! Android XR is official as the platform for extended reality from Google, has Qualcomm and Samsung already building things, and could debut its own fashion-forward glasses in the future. If you are a developer, you’ll want to read Google’s developer-focused blog post here.
This articles is written by : Nermeen Nabil Khear Abdelmalak
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By Nermeen Nabil Khear 
